World Outside

reality
Originally uploaded by Christina Lutze

A while back, I was cruising through emusic and I stumbled onto this group Dept. of Transportation. They have an EP entitled ‘World Outside’ and since I’m always trying to push the boundaries of my musical palette, I downloaded it after the 30 second sample peaked my interest. The title track, ‘World Outside’ has a light ethereal two bar melody that loops in the background and sharp, short, highly syncopated percussion; seemingly played in double time. While indicative of what you’d find on most Broken Beat records, ‘World Outside’ is different. For some reason, its empty open light production style seems deeper, heavier and more meaningful than other songs in the same still slippery-for-me-to-define genre broken beat. World Outside is definitely a case of less is more.

As I listen to this song on my way to work in the morning, I’m always reminded of how beautiful the world is. I find myself focusing on and enjoying the little beautiful things that God created. As I listen, I feel like I’m the narrator of the world, and I’m able to step outside of my surroundings and marvel at the minutia. Trees, birds, the wind, grass, people, cars; everything just seems to be working in this great big fantastic harmony when World Outside comes up on my ipod. If the world had a narrator, World Outside would be their theme music.

I also find myself thinking of the all of the places in the world I haven’t been. Yeah, they say the internet and technology are making the world smaller, . . but it sure didn’t seem any smaller on my 12 hour flight to Nigeria. The world is still a giant place, filled with beautiful little things waiting to be discovered and observed and appreciated and photographed; living, breathing examples of God’s magnificence.

The photo above spoke all those things to me. Its like the visual representation of the song. Perhaps its going from seeing a postcard to actually ‘being there’ you know? I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of the Maldives, but I’ve never been there before. Paris, France; the Galapagos Islands, South Africa, Chile, Perth, Moscow, Hong Kong; the list of places to visit is almost infinite.

Needless to say, it’s usually a let down when I finally arrive at work and realize that my world, is inside a six foot cubicle for the next few hours. As the music slowly fades out, I slowly settle into the tedium of the work day but my soul breaks out of the four corners of postcards and cubicles and imagines actually ‘being there’ and traveling to the far reaches of the earth; not for shopping or eating, or tourism but simply to admire, photograph and appreciate the vast incredible, beautiful, perfect World Outside.